Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day75

“Man is what he thinks. Man dwells where his mind dwells. What is intellectually irrelevant is imprisoned in Temples and has no access to our minds. We repeat cliches; we remember platitudes.” (Essential Writings pg. 87)

We have ‘improved’ on Rabbi Heschel’s words above, we have decided that truth is “intellectually irrelevant” if it doesn’t fit our ideology, if it doesn’t fit into our false memories, if it doesn’t go along with how we want to see the world, etc. We have become enamored with “alternative facts” and we shut our minds and our souls off to what is true and what is real. Hence, we have shut our minds and our beings off to the calls and demands of God, the call of decency, kindness, mercy, justice, love. All of these have become ‘contextual’, as evidenced by the upsurge in anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, racism, and other prejudices that are so prevalent in society today.

Even our religious institutions, our institutions of higher learning have “imprisoned in Temples” what is “intellectually irrelevant” to them. Rather than immersing ourselves in the words and teachings of the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament, we take words and phrases out of context and make them intellectually relevant to the bias’ we have. Rather than delve into “what is the next right action”, rather than “walk humbly with God”, rather than “do justly and love mercy”, we go about our business of competition, comparison, with bastardizations of these truths. Rather than seeing the “both/and” of life we live in an “either/or” state which we use to ‘win at all costs’, even when the cost is to our spiritual health and well-being.

Our fascination with ‘intellectually relevant’ has become an obsession to be right. We are so afraid of uncertainty we lie to ourselves and to everyone else in some fantasy that we outsmart death, outsmart one another in order to prove certainty exists. Our “Temples” have become prisons of this phenomena as well. So many religious leaders and religious institutions are more concerned with their longevity than they are with the truth. So many therapists, life coaches and spiritual counselors, are so concerned with making a living they continue to help people stay in their care rather than helping them to deal with the truth of uncertainty, rather than helping them discern truth, justice, mercy, love, kindness, and connection to a “power greater than themselves”. Too many people and institutions have made a decision that they are greater than, or should be greater than, any other power in the universe.

Society has harmed us greatly by it’s command to become adjusted to “conventional notions and mental cliches”. The demand to “go along to get along” is not just prevalent in one area of society, it is even prevalent in the supposed  rebellions against these “conventional notions and mental cliches”. We are witness’ to how the women who were raped and killed in Israel on Oct. 7th and raped and treated so poorly in captivity by Hamas have not been championed by the woman’s movement, by the Un, by ‘the progressives’; rather they have been ignored, blamed, and vilified for being oppressors! Because it is “intellectually irrelevant” to some ‘progressives’, Israel, all Israelis, all Jews are ‘the oppressors’ and so whatever happens to them, even at the hands of terrorists, is coming to them and ‘the progressives’ cheer the torture, the murders, the rape, the hostage-taking by the terrorists organization Hamas as ‘righteous’ and the terrorists have become ‘freedom fighters’.

It is “intellectually irrelevant” to many people that Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies who want absolute power like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, CPAC, the Evangelicals who want a Christian Nation, the America First people, Steve Bannon, Mike Johnson, Lindsey Graham lie, cheat, try to steal an election, want the demise of our democracy. It is “intellectually irrelevant” to most of the other candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination as well. It is “intellectually irrelevant” to many democrats that Joe Biden has helped our country, cares about democracy, stands with allies, fights against tyranny, seeks bi-partisan compromises, cares for the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow and the orphan as the Bible demands of us. It is “intellectually irrelevant” to people that vaccines work, they save lives, they are developed by people to whom God has given the talent and the spirit to work to prevent unnecessary deaths.

In recovery, we unlock the “Temples” which have imprisoned our minds, our souls. We are in the daily exercise of allowing what is called “intellectually irrelevant” and is, in actuality, truth and wisdom, prophecy and demands from God, to fill our beings and we are letting go of our “old ideas” which we thought helped us and in reality failed us. We are constantly seeking to know God’s will better, to be better human beings, to live lives of service and truth, justice and mercy, responsibility and forgiveness. We see the wreckage of our past from imprisoning our souls, from locking up truth, from shutting down learning and we commit to not repeat these patterns. We aer committed to truth, to learning, to progress, and to live life on life’s terms-not the terms we want to dictate. This is the recovery revolution.

Living without bullshit, living responsibly, has its costs, seeking truth and calling out the lies that have become imprisoned in our “Temples” is dangerous and it is the only way I can live and ‘face’ God, face you each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark